Southampton delivered a sensational surprise on Wednesday by knocking Manchester City out of the quarter-finals of the English Football League Cup, beating their visitors 2-0 at St Mary’s Stadium.
Frenchman Seko Mara (23′) and Malian Moussa Djenepo scored the visitors’ goals with splendid shots (28′) in a game in which City did not shoot any balls on goal.
Southampton thus ended City’s hopes with a possible quadruple this season, given that the English champion is still in the running for the Scudetto and are five points behind leaders Arsenal.
Nottingham Forest also qualified on Wednesday with a 4-3 shoot-out win at home to Wolverhampton after a 1-1 draw after regular time, with goals from Ivory Coast Willy Boly for the hosts (18) and Mexican Raul Jimenez for guests (64).
Southampton and Nottingham completed the golden square after joining Manchester United and Newcastle, who qualified on Tuesday.
City entered the match after back-to-back league wins against Chelsea, the first 1-0 in the league in the middle of last week, and the second 4-0 at the end, to qualify for the FA Cup fourth round.
As managers relax their key players in League Cup competitions, City are also awaiting an expected test against their recently resurrected rivals United away from home in the Manchester derby in the league on Saturday, so Spaniard Pep Guardiola he kept the Norwegian top scorer Erling Haaland on the bench and the playmaker Kevin De Bruyne, the Portuguese Bernardo Silva and the Algerian Riyad Mahrez.
Southampton scored their opener when Brazilian Lianko snatched the ball from the center of the pitch and charged down the right, before setting up a cross which Mara followed low into German goalkeeper Stefan’s beautiful bird into the bottom left corner Ortegas (23).
The “Saints” team doubled up with a splendid goal when Djenepo noticed the goalkeeper’s progress on his own net, and hit a curveball from around 25 meters into the center of the net (28).
At the start of the second half, Guardiola put on De Bruyne, Dutch defenders Nathan Ake and Swiss defender Manuel Akanji (46), before Haaland came on for Jack Grealish after 10 minutes (56).
He later pushed Spanish Rodri as well, but that didn’t work for City, who have won the competition title 8 times, including four in a row between 2018 and 2021.
